Thursday, July 10, 2008

I have heard it said that we are created to bring God glory. While it may be rightly so, we spend our Christian lives working for the glory of God. We do what we can for His glory. We pray for God to bless our toil to his honor. Yet if we are stillborn sinners, lifeless and dead in trespasses, taken from the womb of sin, what can our work accomplish for God’s benefit? If our existence is an affront to God’s holiness, how can the labor of our minds and hands bless Him? Yet even while we are dead and stinking in the grave, the life of Christ beats within the convert’s heart. God takes what is death and, through the propitiatory sacrifice of His only Son, Jesus Christ, He lives His life through us. Our work is not just a means to the ends of glorifying God. Our death to sin, our death to self, our death to pride. . . allows Christ to work in and through us for his own glory. It is not simply doing what we can to repay Christ for His mercy. It is an utterly, and wholly death to self that allows Christ to take up our flesh for the working of His hands.